'Superheros Unmasked' on the History Channel

I went to my friends for dinner last night and they have cable - slaves to the technocrocy that they are.There was a great show on last night - Superheros Unmasked, which was a brief history of comic books. It wasn't solely a 'name and date' list of events but did also talk a bit about the concepts, ideas and issues of the various eras that made the comic characters what they were in that time.I loved the pre-comic's code stuff - especially the early Wonder Woman comics. Wonder Woman was the first comic to be designed by a professional writer who moved into comics and he was a psycologist (or psychiatrist) as well. And of course, the stuff was jaw dropping in its revelation of his personal issues. As well as the wild and wolly days before US censorship. One of the early 'weaknesses' of Wonder Woman back then was - she lost all her powers (strength etc) if her magic bracelets were 'bound together'. Her comics were full of Betty Page-like bondage scenes; bit gags, hobbles, chains, the rack, hoods and so on. There was spanking and catfights; it was just amazing. The images were classic early het soft core bondage. I really have to see if there's an 'Essential Wonder Woman' that has those very early comics.I also discovered that Superman was really the *first* superhero and he, Wonder Woman and Batman were for many yearst the only survivors of the first generation of comics; they've all been in existance since before WW2.The war era was, according to the show anyway, really the era of superheros. A huge number of superhero's were generated and went off to fight Nazi's, the Japs and so on. Pre-comic's code they were full of really graphic violence and absoloutely facinating and terrible racial stereo-types. I belive it was a Captian America comic cover that had him punching a (fanged and squint-eyed) 'Jap' in the arm and the man's flesh was just exploding off his arm to reveal the bones beneath. It was odd to see such graphic images in superhero comcis because nowadays in the mainline hero comics the violence is still mysteriously non-graphic.The show went through the 50's and the introduction of the Comics Code that destroyed all of the early horror comics and badly baudlerized all of the survivors (many comics died in the 50's). The 60's and the attempts to re-vamp various characters to the era - with varying levels of success. The 60's 'Green Lantern/Green Arrow' looked really facinating and I think the current incarnation of 'Thor- God of Thunder' is really the descendent of Green Arrow.One of the more interesting things was the return of Captian America to the comic world and the choice the writers made to have him be the *original* Captian America. I may have to start following that line - as a man who lived through WW2 and it's simpiler moral issues (as reflected in the original comics), he's also facing the fact that thing are *not* that simple and what does he do now?Anyway, as you can see from my endless rambling, I found the show really interesting and if anyone gets a chance to see it they really should.g